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God is Just to Forgive

Mike Pohlman

Mike serves as the senior pastor at Immanuel Bible Church in Bellingham, Washington. Mike is a former church planter in the Pacific Northwest, and served for three
years as the executive producer of The Albert Mohler Program, a nationally
syndicated radio show dedicated to Christianity and culture. Mike has a PhD
in American church history from The Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary. Mike is husband to Julia and
father to four wonderful children: Samuel (12), Anna (10), John (9) and Michael
(4). When not pastoring, Mike loves sports, music, and hanging
out with his family.

2009Feb 20

Comments

As I blog through R.C. Sproul Jr.'s forthcoming Believing God: Twelve Biblical Promises Christians Struggle to Accept I've come to chapter 3: Confession, Forgiveness, and Cleansing. Sproul is concerned that many Christians today struggle to believe they are actually forgiven by God. To help us he points to 1 John 1:9: "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

What I found most helpful in this chapter was his commentary on the justice of God in our fogiveness. Here's an excerpt:

God not only is faithful to forgive us, however, but just to do so. Sometimes I’m afraid we are so eager to praise God for His mercy to us that we misunderstand it, and in a backward sort of way, denigrate it. That is, too often we make the mistake of thinking that we are forgiven for our sins just because God decided to be nice and to look the other way, that He winked at our sins. God is indeed merciful. And He does not remember our sins. They are as far from us as the east is from the west. But it is just that such should be so. Our debt is no more not because He whom we owe forgave it, but because it was paid. He is just to forgive us because He poured out the just punishment for our sins on His Son. And He is just to vindicate us. He raised His Son from the dead to demonstrate that He did not die for His sins, but for ours. In union with Him, raised with Him, we too are vindicated. The Judge of all the earth does judge rightly when He says that sinners like us are not guilty. Jesus paid our debt, and we owe no more. In fact, it would be unjust for God to demand retribution for sins covered on Calvary. In short, it is just that He should forgive us our sins, not because we are worthy, but because worthy is the Lamb.